Tribunal dismisses Atiku, PDP’s request to access and inspect INEC’s server

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has dismissed an application by the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to have access and inspect the Central server said to have been used by the Independent National Electoral Commission for the conduct of the February 23 presidential election.

In a unanimous ruling delivered today Monday June 24th, Justice Mohammed Garba-led bench of five judges, upheld the separate objections by the three respondents to the application. The three respondents are INEC, Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress.

Delivering judgement in the application, the tribunal held that granting such an application when INEC have denied the existence of the said server and insisted that results of the election were not electronically transmitted into any server as alleged by the petitioners, would cause more confusion and distract the tribunal.

Justice Garba added that granting the application would imply that the court had “indeed recognised and found out that there is a central server into which results of the held on February 23, 2019 were electronically transmitted by the 1st respondent (INEC)”.

Atiku is contesting the result of the February 23rd presidential election which President Buhari was declared winner. Atiku in a petition before the tribunal, insisted that he won going by the records on INEC's server. INEC has however come out to denied claims that it uploaded results from various polling units on its server during the presidential election.